We've all seen the pictures and read the stories in the history books
about the kings and queens with their power
and privilege and silks and furs.
But in this series, I want to discover the other side of history.
I'm already quite nervous.
The side we don't often hear about,
how ordinary British people lived their lives.
From the Tudors...
You can see why it did
attract my attention! LAUGHTER
Disgusting!
TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS ..to the Victorians.
Throw a stone in Victorian London, you will hit a drunken cab man.
There's that many of them.
We are not only amused.
CANNON BANGS
From the Georgians...
You take the saw. Oh, my God.
It's horrible, just seeing you do that.
SCREAMING
...to the people who really fought the Second World War.
James could hear the ping of bullets and the clatter of shrapnel.
One thing's for sure, these people knew the meaning of the word tough.
SCREAMING
I'll be finding the truth about their daily lives,
what they ate...
How long would that have lasted? Up to three years.
Urghg
...how they made a living...
There's even value in a rat, when it's dead.
...and those vital necessities of life.
What did you do if you wanted to pee?
The bucket?
This is British History from the bottom up.
You've got to admit, I am terrifying.
LAUGHTER
This time, I'm going back over 200 years to Georgian Britain.
Nowadays, it's seen as a period of great sophistication and elegance.
Darling, where did you get that dress?
But for ordinary people, it was far from that.
For them, the Georgian period was particularly cruel and nasty.
In everything from laws to living standards,
there was a huge chasm between the poor and the wealthy.
CREAKING
But...
...some of those who came from the wrong side of the track
weren't prepared to accept their dreary lot.
Jack Rann, who was born in 1750, was one of them.
Here's Jack.
Like many ordinary families of the time, Jack's was dirt poor.
They would most likely have lived all together in just one room
with no running water,
and just a bucket for a loo.
We think his dad was a peddler,
a street seller, earning maybe six or seven shillings a week -
just 35 quid in today's money -
which meant that most of the family's money was spent on bread,
certainly not on fun.
And yet, just to rub it all in,
jack lived in a city that was oozing with luxury and pleasure...
...Bath.
The go-to tourist destination for Britain's rich and privileged.
They came here to party, sample the spa waters
and generally ponce around.
Oh, the heartache!
But at least the toffs provided a business opportunity
for a certain canny young someone.
Yep, no school for him.
Instead, he'd be following in the footsteps of his dad.
12-year-old jack regularly used to pitch his peddler's cart
in the city centre, in the square,
selling Georgian delicacies like pastries and oranges.
His customers were the high-society men and women,
strutting around like peacocks, with their hair piled high
on their heads...
HORSE WHINNIES
...like a glossy magazine centre-spread,
there, right in front of him.
And the more he saw of it,
the more he wanted a piece of the action.
And, quite frankly, he wanted to look cool enough
to get some of the girls.
Jack saw his chance... WHIP CRACKING
...in the Georgian lust for high-speed travel.
REVVING
WHIP CRACKS AND HORSES WHINNY
For jack, the growing numbers of wealthy travellers
whizzing around the country in fancy carriages
meant the chance of jack going places too.
When he was just 18, he got the plum job in this new world
of high-speed travel -
he became a coachman.
And was soon running all the transport for a large household.
# From stars up, sun down
# We getting money, money, money, money. #
Chris Thomson is an expert on the sort of life jack would have had.
That coat that you're wearing, that, to me,
is traditional coachman's clobber, am I right?
Yeah, great coat, has many capes for keeping out the weather
and it's very heavy and warm,
so in inclement weather, it would be something of a saviour.
In warm weather, it wasn't too good.
And jack would have worn something like this.
What hours would he have worked?
Long hours, long into the night.
If his employer requested to travel overnight,
then jack had to be at the ready.
On a daily basis, he would probably work from dawn till dusk.
And jack wasn't exactly raking it in.
He'd get just £10-15 a year,
a couple of grand today,
although he did get meals and accommodation thrown in.
HORSE WHINNIES AND SNORTS
Regular public stagecoaches were uncomfortable
and packed tight with smelly passengers,
but Jack's was in a different class.
It's beautifully padded. It's like your sofa at home
when you're just sitting there watching the telly.
When jack reached one of the new coaching inns to overnight,
his passengers went inside to relax with a hot meal,
and a freshly made-up bed.
But...
"Jack's long day wasn't over until he'd washed,
brushed and fed the horses.
Often his own bed was right beside them,
along with any fleas and ticks that might happen to be crawling around.
One thing was for certain - being a coachman was not giving jack
the glamour that he craved.
What he wanted was the fat-cat lifestyle of his wealthy passengers.
He'd seen them hand over wads of cash every time they stopped
to pay for the fancy wine and the gorgeous meals
while he had to bed down in the stable.
It was time for a career move.
Jack was about to become a highwayman.
OLD WESTERN MUSIC PLAYS
WHIP CRACKS AND HORSE WHINNIES Yah!
Stand and deliver!
Even back then, highwaymen were romantic figures,
more daring and glamorous than bog-standard robbers.
The mid-Georgian period was the heyday of the highwayman.
There were loads and loads of travellers around,
there was no organised police force to catch them,
and like most highwaymen, and indeed highway women,
jack would ride up to the coach with the travellers in it,
he would shout, "Your money or your life"... SCREAMING
...and he would wave his pistol.
Yah!
But it was extremely dangerous.
Passengers could carry guns, too.
GUNSHOT
So jack knew the risks,
but he was determined that even if his career was going to be
really short, at least it would be fun and exciting,
and just great,
so he dressed like a dandy.
He had these silk breeches and each one was tied with eight
silver strings at the knee,
so he got the nickname Sixteen String jack,
which is a pretty good nickname, isn't it?
And there was one victim who remarked...
PLUMMY VOICE: "jack behaved exceeding civil,
"and rather begged for the money
"than used any violent means."
WHISPERS: He was so cool.
# Yeah, we run the roads
# Yeah, we run the roads... #
As jack notched up success after success, his pile of cash
and his charisma rapidly grew.
CASH REGISTER PINGS
But the authorities were on to him.
He was caught and tried, not once...
...but an incredible 17 times.
And on each occasion, silver-tongued jack out-witted the judge,
and charmed the jury.
But finally, in 1774,
jack was accused of stealing from the King's daughter's chaplain.
What's wonderful is that you can hear Jack's brass cheek
and his accent in the court transcript.
He says,
"I knows no more of it than a child does unborn.
"They have said false things to you."
But jack had made a fateful error.
The court didn't take kindly to the Princess's pastor
being called a liar.
He was found guilty, and this being the Georgian era,
he was sentenced to death.
But, in true jack style, he enjoyed a saucy last supper
with the governor of Newgate prison and seven delightful young ladies.
The next day, a showman to the end,
he danced a high jig on the scaffold...
...before the noose tightened around his neck.
Coming UP---
...what happened to the seaman, who jumped ship.
This is what he would have got, the cat 0' nine tails.
Wham! SCREAMING
And don't break a leg -
facing surgery in Georgian Britain.
Whoa, so that's just splitting me right open all the way round.
Yes.
In Georgian times, Britain began to rule the waves
and ordinary men went off to sea,
exploring, trading and generally enjoying themselves far too much
in ports across the globe.
Hello, big boy.
GLUGGING
Another drink anyone?
One such man was a 24-year-old Irish sailor called John Mara.
He was minding his own business one day in 1770,
just hanging out at a lively port on the Asian island of Java
having a drink down by the harbour, checking out the girls.
Oi, you!
Grab him! Come here!
When suddenly, John was surrounded by British marines.
Are you employed?
They were looking for crewmen...
Who are you working for?
...and had the right to force any seaman between 18 and 55
to join their ship...
What's your name?
...whether he wanted to or not.
John had no choice.
He'd been press-ganged.
About a quarter of the navy's sailors were recruited like this.
So, who exactly was behind John's dastardly kidnap?
None other than the famous explorer Captain James Cook.
John was now a sailor in Cook's crew on board HMS Endeavour.
John Mara soon calmed down.
He admitted that one ship was pretty much as good as any other
and only a fool would want to stay in this disease-ridden port.
So, he was welcomed on board.
# Mama told me to never look back
# She said strap your things tight across your back... #
In Georgian times, there was no such thing as cabins for ordinary seamen.
So, when John first got on board, he would have been given a hammock,
would've gone below and found somewhere to put it
and that would have been his living quarters for the rest of the voyage.
But at least he travelled light,
so storage of all his worldly goods wouldn't be a problem.
These were called ditty bags.
This was where each sailor kept his spare change of clothes,
his mementos, his knife, his Bible.
That was the lot.
And John wouldn't even have had a uniform to worry about
because he wasn't an officer.
# Strap your things tight across your back, honey. #
So, this is where the men lived
and down here was the officer's quarters.
And if any of the sailors just went beyond that line,
they could be shot by a marine.
If you just looked an officer in the eye,
then you could be punished for dumb insolence.
But look at the difference.
This was how the officers lived.
John became a gunner's mate.
His job was to keep the cannons secure and the powder dry.
He also made sure all the ship's ropes, pulleys and sails
were in good order.
He'd work four hours on, eight off,
with extra time off when they reached port.
Most clays, John would be faced with just endless skies and endless seas.
But it wasn't exactly peaceful.
CLUCKING, BLEATING AND MOOING
It's hard to imagine, but this deck would've been covered in goats,
sheep and chicken,
EVE“ COWS.
And some of the men had clumped together and brought a pig on board.
And all those animals would have created a right old mess...
...one that John and the other seamen would have to clean up.
Everyone knows that the sailors used to scrub the decks
and I'd always assumed that that meant with a scrubbing brush,
but it didn't.
This is what they used.
This is, like, a square of sandstone
and you stuck a peg in it like that and you went back and forward
and back and forward, day after day.
Essentially, it was a discipline thing.
It just kept the lads from arguing and thumping each other,
but it had a secondary effect which they weren't at all aware of,
is that it kept the germs down.
So, essentially, ships were a pretty healthy place to live.
Though, after a few months at sea, there would be less mess to clean up
because all the animals would have been eaten.
Sophie Forgan, an expert on Georgian naval cuisine,
knows what kind of food John would've been left with.
That's a bit of really manky salt pork.
Now, that is as solid as a rock.
How long would that have lasted?
Well, they did last up to three years. Urgh!
But pretty awful by that time.
It must have been incredibly salty.
Very, very salty.
But one way you got rid of the salt was to put the joints in a small net
and tow them behind the ship to wash some of the excess salt off.
Is it right that occasionally John would be treated to something weird,
like albatross?
It is right.
Everything they shot was eaten.
The only one they turned their backs on was walrus.
SNORTING
The sailors said, "No way."
But there was one fate even worse than walrus for breakfast -
scurvy.
On long voyages, it was the biggest threat to John's life.
The disease was caused by a lack of vitamin C,
and on some ships, it killed half the crew.
Men like John were terrified of scurvy
and you can't blame them.
It was absolutely horrible.
Your skin started to go pale, your eyes sunk in,
your gums went all swollen and bloody,
Your teeth fell out, you got covered in bruises,
then your arms and legs started to go black.
Death, when it came, was a blessed relief.
Luckily, John never got scurvy
and travelling at a modest speed of just under ten miles an hour
made it as far away as it's possible to be from Britain -
the South Pacific.
He must have thought he was in paradise.
In Tahiti, he got friendly with the local chief,
who apparently offered him his own house,
his own land and the prettiest girl in the village to be his wife,
chosen from among a dozen maidens.
John was over the moon, "What an offer! Let's get out of here!"
And being a strong swimmer, he knew when to make his move.
He waited until the sails were being lifted
and the anchor was being weighed and sprinted to the side,
dived overboard and began swimming through the crystal clear waters
towards paradise.
RECORD SCRATCH
Unfortunately, he was spotted, he was dragged back
and brought dripping into the ship to be punished by the captain.
This is what he would have got, the cat 0' nine tails.
Wham!
But he wouldn't have been standing up.
He would have to lie down like this.
And this was known as kissing the gunner's daughter
and get whacked on the back and on the bottom.
A dozen lashes, that was the standard dose,
although, quite honestly, for a bloke like Mara,
I don't think it would've made any difference.
After five years sailing round the world with Cook,
John finally returned to Britain.
He'd made a bit of money and he could've called it quits,
settled down in Ireland in a cottage by the sea.
But he didn't.
Grog got the better of him and he drank it all away.
And the last time we ever hear of him
is in a port on the coast of Australia,
looking for another berth, another ship
and another adventure.
One thing you definitely didn't want to be in Georgian times
was ill.
You might find yourself being bled for acne.
Oh, God!
Or get tobacco smoke blown up your bottom...
...to cure a headache.
And as for surgery, even if you could afford it,
run a mile, if you're able to.
If you were poor, naturally, you'd be stuffed either way,
unless you happened to be in the right place at the right time,
which surprisingly could be somewhere round here.
It's just another day in London's most notorious district,
Jacob's Island, near London Bridge.
Also known as the capital of cholera
or the Venice of Slums.
Houses rotted by dampness,
windows covered in paper and rags,
the whole place overcrowded with people
and dirty-faced kids swarming everywhere.
One of the residents, 60-year-old Elizabeth Regan,
is woken up really early by the racket of people clattering past.
When she's emptied the contents of her chamber pot out of the window,
she pops out and joins the queue for the pump
to get some water for her stew.
In Georgian times, 60 was considered pretty ancient,
so Elizabeth was probably shacked up with her grown-up children,
helping out with the cooking and the shopping.
Nearby Borough Market was the perfect place
for her to bag a bargain.
BELL TOLLS
This particular morning, she was rushing down Borough High Street
avoiding all the crowds of people and the horse-drawn carts.
And as she's crossing the road...
...she trips over...
...a cart runs over her leg...
WOMAN SCREAMING
...multiple compound fractures.
And remember in those clays, there were no ambulances, no NHS.
But she's very lucky because the accident has happened
just outside one of the most important hospitals in London
that's been here since medieval times, St Thomas'.
There must've been a friendly bystander
who helped her limp to the door.
Then Elizabeth would have been carried up these stairs.
52 ancient, cranky, wooden steps.
You really do feel like you're walking back into history.
Next, bleeding, in pain and on the edge of consciousness,
Elizabeth wouldn't have been certain that the hospital
would even admit her.
Julie Mathias knows all about the history of St Thomas'.
If I came here, I've had a road accident
and my legs are all smashed up,
my mates carry me here, dump me on the floor -
what would be your response?
Well, you would actually be quite fortunate in that case
because the hospital provided one ward to access cases of an emergency
such as yours. Casualty?
Absolutely. So I've actually come to Casualty.
Priority patients as you were, yes, indeed.
So, things are sort of looking up.
Despite being from the worst postcode in London,
Elizabeth had a world-leading surgeon on her case.
I'm going to put myself in her place
to get an idea of what Elizabeth went through
in Europe's oldest operating theatre.
Coming UP---
...Casualty, Georgian style.
That's actually to stop the blood going through the floorboards.
Can the surgeons save Elizabeth?
And risking everything to put a decent meal on the table.
Along comes Mr Rabbit.
La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.
Oh! Goodness!
London, 1824.
60-year-old Elizabeth Regan, a poor lady from a local slum,
has been involved in a road traffic accident and broken her leg.
Luckily, she'd been admitted to St Thomas' Hospital
for emergency surgery.
Unluckily for Elizabeth, it's the Georgian times.
I'm following the surgery in Elizabeth's footsteps.
Well, footstep. Karen Howell is my surgeon.
Scary!
Karen, presumably you'll operate on me,
because you've got the pinafore on. That's right.
I'm the operator for today, the surgeon, for you,
so I'm hoping to amputate your leg.
Elizabeth must have been a tough cookie,
but this experience would have terrified her.
I must admit, I'm already quite nervous.
Just below me here... Yeah.
...look at this.
This sawdust, presumably, is for collecting my blood
and bits and pieces. You've got that right.
That's actually to stop the blood going
through the floorboards. The church is below us.
There was a church underneath?
I don't want to drip on the congregation. That's right.
But fear not, Elizabeth,
you're getting hi-tech treatment.
The operating table was the latest design,
featuring a pop-out platform for Elizabeth's good leg.
Even a headrest, and the table was a handy height
for holding her down.
Thoughtful touch.
Tourniquets on to limit the damage.
We're managing your blood, so that when we cut,
I don't lose much blood.
But that wasn't all Elizabeth had to cope with.
She suffered this indignity in front of crowds of people
who were making an incredible amount of noise,
yelling at the assistants to keep their heads out of the way.
There would be a few medical students, naturally,
but, in some hospitals, they actually issued tickets.
There was no anaesthetic, just a piece of leather to chew on
and maybe a prayer before the chop came.
In the 18th century,
the Georgian method is circular action on one knee.
Are you ready? Yeah. We have permission to amputate
and you're bracing yourself.
There's an old technique they call the tour de maitre -
master's round - goes round like this and you can see
what's going to happen. So we're ready.
And pull round like this. SQUELCHING SOUND EFFECT
Whoa! So that's just splitting me right open all the way round.
And the idea was, then you take the saw... Oh, my God.
We know, really, it's about six to eight cuts through that one bone.
Very fast saws, they are.
It's horrible just seeing you do that.
Then that is the bone through. So my leg's gone now? Yeah.
There's no leg there now.
Elizabeth began to faint, but got a hefty slap to keep her conscious.
With blood everywhere, she must hang on in there.
The arteries are now severed.
We need to act quickly to close up the wound.
Basically, we put a thread through there - a big, thick thread -
and tie it like a drawstring bag.
The operation was a success.
Well, at least Elizabeth didn't die on the operating table.
But then came the tricky bit - recovery.
Thanks to the unsanitary conditions in the hospital,
Elizabeth's chance of survival was just one in three.
Despite her ordeal in the operating theatre, Elizabeth didn't make it.
She never left the ward.
Within a week, she died of infection.
And yet, within 50 years, the medical profession had started
to become aware of bacteria and began cleaning
their surgical instruments and their operating theatres.
Although, sadly, for one brave Georgian, that came too late.
One of the biggest problems for the poor in Georgian times
was that they were powerless to change their lot.
Ordinary people couldn't vote,
so the laws were made by the rich and for the rich.
And to keep the working class under control,
the powerful voted in a long list of crimes
you could be hanged for -
over 200 of them, in fact.
SCREAMING
You could be strung up for anything from, oh, destroying a tollgate...
...to impersonating a Chelsea pensioner.
How dare you?!
But even more serious was pinching the toffs' game.
Local rumour down here in Hampshire at the time suggested
that Charles Smith was a practitioner at the dark art
of poaching - although no-one had ever actually seen him do it.
This looks like Charles in 1821, aged 28,
with his son.
Standing a 6ft tall when the average was just 5ft 5,
he was thought a rather romantic figure.
He even married above his station.
Charles lived with his wife, who was the daughter of a wealthy farmer,
and his kids and his little terrier in a cottage
very much like this one.
So, he'd got a roof over his head,
probably thatched like this one.
This is actually quite gorgeous, isn't it?
But to feed his family, Charles needed money.
Some of it came from his day job as a casual labourer.
He could get the occasional day digging ditches,
lugging clay around at the brick kilns,
scraping the skins at the tanners.
And, back in the old clays, that might have been enough to buy things
like butter, cheese
and the occasional bit of meat for dinner.
But getting food on the table was getting harder and harder.
A run of terrible harvests, new food laws and fat landowners
jacking up their prices changed everything.
Now, to avoid starvation, families like Charles's had to spend
all their money just to buy the basics.
This is how the food would have been cooked.
Although it would have been pretty rudimentary -
something like tatters and shake, which was potatoes with salt on it,
or a flat bread like something that you get in the kebab shop -
the difference being that there was no meat in it.
In fact, they had virtually no protein at all.
CHILD CRIES
I want some protein!
And, in 1816, the government made it illegal for ordinary people
to hunt and kill any sort of game...
GUNSHOT
...even wild rabbits.
Oh, courgettes in butter!
So while the rich had more fine food
than they could fill their faces with...
...Charles and his family were starving.
Mm, halibut!
Charles's local landowner was an aristocrat called
Henry Temple Viscount Lord Palmerston,
which is a bit of a mouthful,
and he was the future Prime Minister.
He loved having fancy parties for his hunting friends
and his estates were jam-packed full of deer and pheasant
and partridge and all sorts of yummy treats.
So if a man's kids were hungry,
what else was he supposed to do?
Charles turned to poaching.
Seb Littlewood is an expert on poaching in Georgian times.
What kind of snares or traps did Charles use?
There were small traps, like these small animal traps,
so... What is it that? It looks like a trap for fairies.
Yeah, it's about the right size.
So this is this is how this operates.
So it's sprung by pushing this down.
You open the teeth
and then we clip that up like that.
OK, so it's all set for the rabbit.
Along comes Mr Rabbit. Yeah.
# La-la-la. # La-la-la-la-la-la-la.
Oh, God! That's so horrible, isn't it?
It's not nice.
And, presumably, the thing about leaving
a few of these around is that it means the gamekeeper
will know that there are poachers about.
If the gamekeeper comes across them, he knows people are out and about.
Poacher comes back to check his traps.
Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah.
So a rabbit trap could become a trap for the poacher who set it.
SCREAMING
So if Charles wanted something much bigger and much more effective,
what might he do?
Well, there is this option.
I suppose, something like this. Hey-hey!
Would you actually be able to bring down something like a rabbit
with that? You would. Although it's a musket,
it works much the same way as a modern shotgun.
Oh, so you put pellets in it? Pellets in it.
This was scattershot - meant that, hopefully,
anything sort of ten, 15 yards away,
you're going to hit it. But isn't there a big drawback
to using a gun - the bang? The bang,
the size. Absolutely.
Generally, the whole idea about poaching
is you're relying on stealth, on a level of secrecy.
Something like this,
you're going to hear it from half a mile away.
GUNSHOT
But Charles was presented with an irresistible opportunity.
On the 22nd of November, 1820,
there was a big and noisy local festival.
Oh, revel, revel, revel. I do love a revel. Ha-ha!
None of the revellers, Charles figured, would hear his musket
in the distant woods.
Hooray!
When it was dark, Charles went over to his hiding place,
produced his musket,
and he would have had a big tunic on,
with a pocket in it down here somewhere, and he would put the butt
in it to support it.
And then he would sneak out, hoping that, before morning,
he would have been able to find something warm and furry
with which he could feed his family the next day.
The weather was perfect - just enough moon to light the way
and just enough wind in the trees to mask the sound of footfall.
Taking his terrier, Charles made his way
to collect his brother-in-law, John Pointer.
Then the two of them pressed on
to the plantation of Palmerston's estate with all its rich pickings.
Cautiously, they crept to the spot where they'd seen
pheasants roosting earlier.
Charles raised his gun.
But, unfortunately, deputy gamekeeper Robert Snelgrove
was a party pooper who'd rather be lying in wait
for poachers than revelling.
As soon as he heard Smith's gun, he was after them.
Snelgrove caught up with them and, as he did so,
there was a bang...
...and an almighty cloud of smoke.
It cleared to reveal Snelgrove bleeding badly from his thigh.
The poachers were nowhere to be seen.
Charles Smith went on the run,
but Snelgrove had seen his face clearly enough to identify him.
It took them over a year to catch up with Charles.
But, eventually, he was tried in Winchester
and on March the 23rd, 1822, he was hanged.
Charles was one of the last men hung for poaching under the Georgians.
He was unlucky. Just a year later,
the law was changed and poaching was no longer punishable by death.
Coming up, a gin hawker who sells her spirits at the gallows.
If you're going to go see a proper set of hangings for the day,
you're going to need refreshment. You're going to need gin.
In Georgian times, the countryside was beginning to get crowded.
So a lot of ordinary country folk started heading off to the cities.
And nowhere was a more seductive destination
than the booming capital.
In the 1730s, the whole of London was squashed
into a fraction of its size today.
London started here, around about Tower Bridge - that's there -
and stretched about a mile in this direction
over towards Westminster.
And that was London.
And it was ram-packed full. About 700,000 people and dogs
and horses and other animals.
And amongst this hurly-burly was a woman called Elizabeth Bowman.
She's in there somewhere.
That's her.
Elizabeth was one of the many young single women
who saw an opportunity to make money
from Georgian London's expanding population.
Six clays a week, she'd get up at sunrise and leave
her small, rented room to come shopping here
at Covent Garden market.
It was the best place in London
to buy juniper berries, herbs and spices.
Because Elizabeth was a maker and seller
of the capital's most popular recreational product - gin.
In Georgian times, in London,
they were knocking back an incredible
seven million gallons of gin every year.
That's... It's stupid!
...two pints of gin every week for every adult.
Oh, thank you.
Two pints is what we drink, on average, per year.
I mean, all right, I'm slightly more than the average,
but you know what I mean.
Anyway, Elizabeth certainly had a lot of eager customers
for her product, but what was her life like?
Anistatia Miller is an expert on drinking in the 18th century.
Why do you reckon a woman like Elizabeth would have got
involved in the gin-making trade?
Because, if you were a good girl, you would want to do something
where it's honourable enough that you could sell something,
you could make something, you could make enough of a profit.
So are you implying that she could avoid the sex trade?
She could avoid the sex trade.
An incredible 20% of Georgian London's young women were involved
in the sex trade, whereas selling and making gin was considered
far more respectable.
For Elizabeth, it meant she could afford a new bonnet
when she needed, or visit one of the new theatres
that were springing up around Covent Garden.
And she might even treat herself to a ball of scented soap
for her daily ablutions.
Making gin was a bit of a dodgy business.
First, Elizabeth probably blagged a jug or two of rough, neat spirit
from the local distillery.
No questions asked.
OK, so Elizabeth's got some of this dodgy stuff.
She takes it home. Yes. What does she do?
Well, she's going to make it into gin.
Easiest way is you take your spirit...
She probably used just regular crockery, jugs, things like that.
Now, here's the important part.
She had to have juniper.
Is that the thing that really marks gin out?
That is what gin is.
But juniper berries were pricey
and might sometimes have been beyond Elizabeth's budget.
Other way to do it, to get that piney smell, was to use this.
Blimey! I know what that is!
Is that paint stripper?
Well, it's oil of turps. Turps? Yes.
They used to tip turps into the gin?
Well, they also used to take oil of vitriol to give it
a little bit of peppery bite. Which is what? Sulphuric acid.
Oh, that's ridiculous! Oh, I know.
And if she was feeling creative,
Elizabeth may have added her own herbs and spices, as well.
Seal this up.
Let it sit overnight and you're done.
You've made gin.
Once Elizabeth had made her gin,
the next challenge was to flog her dodgy home-brew.
One of the most horrible things confronting Elizabeth daily
would have been the sheer filthiness of London.
There'd have been rubbish strewn all over the place,
pigs snorting everywhere.
And, in the clays before mains sewers had been put in,
human effluent was just chucked into the street,
or else - whoosh - went straight into the River Thames.
Elizabeth would have had to walk many miles a day through this,
without wellies or a facemask, just to get to her customers.
Where and when was gin sold?
They sold it everywhere.
They were going up and down the streets to do it.
But the best place to sell gin was if you showed up to places
where people gathered.
And you're looking at hangings at the Tyburn Tree.
If you're going to go see a proper set of hangings for the day,
you're going to need refreshment. You're going to need gin.
After spending the day at the gallows, Elizabeth
might have found some more thirsty customers at the local fight night.
Women used to do bare-knuckle fighting
because it was another way to make money.
And they'd be selling gin as a refreshment.
But they also gave it away as a prize. Really?
Ladies love gin!
But, unfortunately, ladies loved it too much,
as did men and quite a few children.
By the 1730s, gin was no longer just a recreational drug.
Londoners had become hopelessly addicted to the tipple
Elizabeth was selling.
So the government banned hawking gin on the streets, and that meant...
...Elizabeth's livelihood was seriously under threat.
Desperate for an income, she moved her gin operation underground
and found a clever way to advertise her bootleg -
a puss and mew.
What you do, you fancy a gin, right?
This is absolutely true.
You would stand outside it going,
"Puss, puss, puss, puss, puss, puss, puss.
Inside, Elizabeth would hear it and she would reply,
"Mew, mew, mew, mew, mew."
So the bloke knew that it was time to put his penny in,
or his tuppence, if he wanted a double.
And then she would pour the gin out,
and it would come down that spout
and he would get out his pewter mug and drink it.
It was a bit like ordering a burger from a drive-in.
But in spring 1738, Elizabeth's luck finally ran out.
She was snitched on for selling gin and sentenced
to two months' imprisonment at the Tothill House of Correction.
Georgian houses of correction were pretty brutal places.
Inmates like Elizabeth were forced into hard labour.
They used to have to spend the whole day hammering away
at tough hemp plants to extract the fibres for rope making.
They lived in squalid, cramped conditions.
The food was meagre,
the whippings were frequent.
All for committing the crime,
basically, of being a poor person trying to get a living
in a rich man's world.
After prison, Elizabeth disappears from the historical records.
Maybe she stopped selling gin.
Or maybe this canny operator became even better at hiding her trade.
For ordinary people in Georgian Britain - whether gin hawkers,
sailors or poachers - life was a hell of a struggle.
But I'm just in awe of their spirit of survival.
Next time, taking on the Nazis.
It's the Second World War.
The whole day was a long list of drills,
physical exercises and skills training.
How they survived...
What did you do if you wanted a pee?
Go in the bucket. The bucket?
...how they fought...
James could hear the ping of bullets and the clatter of shrapnel.
...and how they kicked back.
They played hard and worked hard.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media